Hi there.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be making some changes to this newsletter.

You may have noticed I finally gave it a name: The Brand Strategy Brief.

Soon, I’ll be moving off the Beehiiv platform and back to Kit.

Beehiiv is a great newsletter platform. I love the interface. And it’s the best option if you’re looking to monetize your newsletter through sponsorships.

But, I’m not.

And, unfortunately, Beehiiv lacks a lot of functionality in other areas if that isn’t your goal.

So, the format may start to look a bit different soon.

Making these changes got me thinking:

“If someone only had 30 minutes, what would I recommend to give someone a solid foundation to get the most out of their brand strategy?”

So, today, I’d like to share some of the best resources I’ve created to help you gain a strong foundation in the fundamentals of using brand strategy to boost customer preference and win market share:

• Translating customer insights and macro environment data into brand strategy
• Getting more customers to prefer and buy from you
• Keeping your brand both relevant and consistent
• Aligning teams in pursuit of the same goals.

Because one of the biggest challenges in brand strategy is making sure these fundamentals are present in every strategy.

It’s tempting to replicate the success of a flashy new brand like Liquid Death or a well-established juggernaut like Coca-Cola. But what inevitably happens is that you end up with surface-level mimicry: tactics that seem clever but are disconnected from your strategy.

And that puts your brand in a perilous position, with execution that isn’t relevant to your company or customers.

I saw this firsthand consulting Kohl’s during the Great Recession.

Macy’s and JCPenney tried to copy us. But they didn’t have the same understanding of our customers, the market, and how the tactics supported strategies tied to specific business goals.

They did a lot of things that looked like us. But they lost market share.

Here’s the thing: brand strategy only works when you stop thinking of brand goals as something separate from business goals. But when you see the brand strategy as a way to change customer preference in service of business goals, you start to see where there are opportunities for gaining market share. And you can clearly see how to apply insights across teams and get everyone working in the same direction with greater confidence.

So, here are some resources to lay that foundation:

1. ​Recap: Top 5 Newsletters of the Year(6 minutes): This is the best place to start. It’s a quick-hit summary of my best newsletters of 2024 that featured foundational strategies to keep your brand consistent, your team aligned, and your customers choosing you. You’ll learn how brands like Pepsi and P&G stay laser-focused on customers, how to ensure the whole organization stays aligned on the brand, ways to boost brand preference, how to get the type of insights that lead to strategies that win market share, and my personal SPARK method to unlock more creative ideas that are relevant to your customers.
2. ​Want to Build a Brand Your Competitors Wish They Created?(9 minutes): Many brands make the mistake of trying to be better than their competitors. But when you declare yourself as better, customers do something dangerous: they start comparing you and thinking of other brands. This issue shows you how to build a brand that stands apart by identifying what customers truly value, even when they don’t say it directly. You’ll learn how to uncover overlooked opportunities in your market, create deeper customer connections, and develop a strategy that competitors can’t easily replicate.
3. ​How Sears Failed and Amazon Succeeded(10 minutes): One of the most dangerous things a brand can do is become complacent. Because when you become complacent, you stop taking risks, and you get stuck in the present, ignoring the reality that a different future is inevitable. Sears, once a retail giant, failed to evolve with changing consumer behaviors and technological advancements, leading to its decline. But Amazon prioritized understanding and anticipating future customer needs, allowing it to innovate and dominate the market. In this issue I highlight how to combine customer insights with macro environment trends to make your brand succeed not just today but in the future.
4. ​The Key Reason Why a Strong Brand Starts With Your Backstory(7 minutes): It’s easy to lose sight of your backstory. But your origin story is a powerful tool to create clarity, consistency, and trust. In this issue, I show you how a strong backstory acts as both a compass and a constraint that guides decisions, fuels creativity, and ensures that your brand stays consistent with what makes it valuable in the eyes of your customers. I also link to an article I wrote about fashion designer Virgil Abloh and how he used these same principles to fuel a once-in-a-generation career.

But don’t just read these newsletters and file them away.

Instead my challenge to you is this: start with one of them, pick something that resonates, and apply it to your work this week.

Because you can’t boost customer preference and gain market share by knowledge alone. You have to do it by putting these foundational principles into practice.

So keep refining your strategy, keep digging into these weekly newsletters, and don’t forget to put these insights, strategies, and tactics into practice.

Onward